For 24.6.19

Drafting a Literature Review

For the next two weeks, we will practice drafting the literature review and where your assignment is to compare and contrast two sources and add what you think they offer your research question.

All of the references noted below you will find in our Dropbox/Resources for 24.6.19, and your task is to survey these sources to develop an overview, select those you find accessible, and apply them in the preparation of a paragraph

Here’s an overview, the game plan

Overview. Examine how, in “UTS 1a, bib to lit review,” the critical review of a few sources is to be organized “as an argument according to a critical analysis” and where you compare two or more sources and suggest how they help extend current understanding

Knowledge transformation. Examine how, in “UTS 1b, telling to extending”, your task is “to interpret and reshape other people’s knowledge,” meaning you’ve got to report on them accurately before you conduct your analysis, and where you demonstrate that you can find relevant literatures in the first place and then “analyze the relationships between different ideas about a topic”

Drafting a paragraph.. Examine how, in “UTS 1e critical literature review,” the authors compare and contrast two paragraphs, identify and analyze meaning, and finally offer their conculsion — based on their analysis as demonstrated above

They Say / I Say. Observe how, in “Ways+to+Introduce+an+Argument+or+Ongoing+Debate,” the authors clearly distinguish between what others are saying and what they might think about it

Discussion. This is very important for those who have been trained to prepare “opinion essays”, where you gloss what others say but write if you are the expert: in research we don’t do this, but instead, respect oursources (and ourselves) by distinguishing clearly who says what in a conversation among peers: instead of making believe you are an expert, researches identify the sources of all of their evidence, ideas, and arguments, draw conclusions based on what others are done, and write as if any of those authors were in the room: you are writing for professionals who likely know more than you do!

Engaging Sources

Engaging Sources, Craft Chapter 6. You will want to read carefully, outline, and systematically apply the lessons offered by this chapter; spend some good time with this, wrap your head around this simply excellent discussion!

Eight Strategies, Yale. Learn how to “draw battle lines,” which assumes you have found at least two different ways of understanding your topic: you will need to do something like this to examine things critically, and not incidentally, if you choose relevant professionals writing for others, simply reporting on their arguments will do the heavy lifting for you: genius here means your standing on the shoulders of giants

Drafting

Talk/Write. DO NOT work alone when formulating your arguments, because they you will be speaking to ghosts and struggling to write in the limited structures of your PC and word processor and likely at the last minute and so with your hands tied behind your back: first discuss this with a partner, speak in everyday language, note when they nod in agreement or don’t and expect clarificatoin, and in this way you beta-test your ideas so that when you draft you are writing down what you know your partner thinks makes sense, and that means writing with community and confidence

Report Structures. This advice is both structural and for revision: you want to learn how to think in the terms of reporting (instead of the dreadful “opinon essay” and, when drafting, choose your reporting verbs carefully. Review the two articles on Report Structures that you will find in this Dropbox folder and apply the lessons; learn how to report accurately on what others are saying and how to use different reporting verbs to do so with greater precision.

Stitching Signal Words. Finally, take a moment to learn 2-3 new signal words to better stitch together your argument: learning a few of these terms will help you develop your “red thread”.

Independent, autonomous learning

While I am quite happy to offer a plan for you to follow, both research and management require the ability to assume leadership as one heads off into the unknown; hence, I offer you specific assignments to get started, but also some room for you to pick and choose among them as well as apply them to your purposes as best you can. We are preparing to become leaders, managers, decision-makers — people who consider options before choosing a course of action.

For such people of action, plans are wonderful for execution, not least because then everyone knows what to do. But choosing which plan and how to design it requires not simply leading and following, but considering alternatives, doing so as teams, in highly competitive environments, where the future cannot be known, the options are many, and the risks are high.